Managers are usually in charge of overseeing, evaluating, and leading the work of others. This concentration on exterior goals and activities may not foster introspection, but managers must assess their behaviour and performance as well as that of their staff. Understanding your management style, skills, and limitations can help you become a more effective team member and make it easier to oversee your employees’ performance.
Why do you need to know about your management style?
Understanding your management style and how to apply it effectively is a crucial element of learning how to make others better. It’s considered an essential component of being a manager at any company—but how can you do that when you may not even realise you have one? Do you consider yourself to be an energiser, harmoniser, or forecaster? Which do you prefer: democratic or autocratic approaches? Your answers to these questions can help determine your specific style.
How to learn about your management style
Before you can evaluate what your management style is and then understand it, it’s important to know the different management styles there are. These can include:
- Visionary management
- Democratic management
- Autocratic management
- Transformational management
- Coaching management
- Transactional management
There are many different ways you can learn your management style, such as online quizzes or a management course, like our So You’ve Made It To ‘Manager’ course.
Understanding your style
Employees who work for a good manager are more likely to achieve better. You want to embrace and instil positive management methods in the workplace to inspire your staff to put their best foot forwards. To do so, you’ll need to engage in some self-reflection and better understand your management style.
The best way to do this is to know yourself by assessing your work and how you approach it—looking at your work habits, such as managing your time, setting priorities, and how organised you are. It’s also essential to think about how others might see you and reflect on how your colleagues and team members interact with you. You can even ask a few trusted team members or superiors how they see your management style.
The context behind where you work and how you work is crucial to understanding your management style too, as the context in which you work might determine how you manage. Your management style isn’t something that’s set in stone. You should always identify areas to adjust and develop and take inspiration from those around you and other managers and their approaches.
Advantages of knowing and understanding your management style
Knowing your management style will help you grow and develop as a leader, as well as manage your team more effectively, no matter how big or small. The most effective leaders are constantly striving to improve themselves and are willing to adapt their approaches that benefit their organisation with personal development tools and management training.
You can change your management style by recognising what it is and weighing the benefits and drawbacks. You don’t have to make a massive adjustment; you can blend some approaches with others.
An example of this could be that a transactional manager may reward more subjective actions like coming up with an appealing new approach to keep customers engaged on the company website. Whereas a transformative manager could start requiring their employees to write weekly detailed progress reports on their current projects.
Take your management skills to the next level
Whether you’re a new or emerging manager or an experienced one, you can always find ways to develop your skills and management styles. Our management course: So You’ve Made It To ‘Manager’ offers insightful resources and practical tools to help make your management style even more effective.
At Pathways Australia, we’re dedicated to helping you succeed in both your personal and professional lives. Contact our team now to learn more about how this management course will help you become a better manager.
